English Toffee

Here’s a little tidbit about English Toffee: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, toffee ("a sweet meat made from sugar or treacle, butter, and sometimes a little flour, boiled together; often mixed with bruised nuts such as almond or walnut toffee") was first mentioned in print in 1825. We know that most words are typically used long before they appear in print form. And we know…that almost everyone loves English Toffee!

English Toffee, a variation of "Toffee...the modern British name for a sweet formerly called 'taffy.' The older name survives in the USA, but British toffee and American taffy are certainly not quite the same....Welsh forms of toffee (variously called taffi, ffani, or cyflaith) are much more like American taffy. In particular, they are usually pulled, as is most American taffy. The agreeable custom of taffy-pulling parties has survived up to modern times in parts of Wales, while it is probably extinct in England. "

---The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson, [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 797-798)

English Toffee like "Toffee became popular around 1800, a time when sugar and treacle (a sugar syrup like molasses) had become cheap. Early references to toffee all come from the north of England and often mention friends getting together to boil treacle with flour to make a sticky treat. Improvements to the basic mixture included adding cream a speciality of Devonshire or butter to make a richly flavoured confection. Buttery toffee, sometimes called English Toffee, is often called butterscotch, which suggests it was invented in Scotland. But the word was first recorded in the Yorkshire town of Doncaster, where Samuel Parkinson began making it in 1817. Possibly the "scotch" part of its name derives from "scorch" rather than from Scotland. As for the word "toffee," an early spelling is "toughy" or "tuffy," probably a reference to the confection's teeth-sticking toughness." No matter where in the world…English Toffee is a favorite treat year ‘round!

---"ENGLISH TOFFEE Sweet, rich, and beloved by the British," British Heritage, February-March 2002